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4 Dodgers who will have bounce-back seasons in 2024
Keep your eyes on these Dodgers comeback stories.
The Dodgers are coming off a 100-win regular season, but yet another short playoff run. If LA is going to go deeper into the postseason in 2024, the Dodgers will be relying on their Big 3 of Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman -- but those three can’t carry the team all on their own.
A few Dodgers had down years in 2023. The Dodgers also went out and signed a few veterans after down seasons on other teams. Those players will need to have comeback seasons this year to support LA’s star power. Here are the four players who will turn around their underwhelming 2023 seasons and help the Dodgers make a World Series run.
4 Dodgers who will bounce back in 2024
Will Smith
Will Smith made his first career All-Star Game appearance after a great first half of 2023. But Smith faded as the year went on, and actually posted the worst OPS (.797) and OPS+ (114) marks of his career, despite the All-Star nod. His OPS sat at .889 before the All-Star break, but then dropped nearly 100 points over the course of the rest of the season. The main reason for Smith's down year was a power drought in the second half of the season. Smith had belted 13 home runs before the break, but only managed to hit six home runs in the remainder of 2023.
But, there are signs Smith will bounce back in 2024. He posted an OBP of .359 in 2024, which is actually higher than his career OBP of .357. Smith was more patient at the plate, posting a career high in walks, and he also had the highest batting average of any season in his career, excluding the shortened 2020 season. If Smith can balance out the patient approach by picking the right spots to be aggressive in 2024, he'll break out of his power drought and bolster the middle of an already formidable Dodgers lineup.
James Paxton
A Paxton bounce back season might not be fully necessary in 2024, considering the Dodgers will have Clayton Kershaw coming back in July-ish. But no organization will ever complain about having extra pitching depth, and the Dodgers saw the effects of not having that depth in 2023 when LA was without Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, Walker Buehler, Kershaw, and more for various parts of the season due to injury.
Paxton posted a 3.57 ERA in 127 starts from 2014-2019. After that, he had Tommy John surgeries in 2020 and rehabbed through 2021, stopping his momentum from a solid start to his career.
In 2023, it looked like he was on his way to a miraculous comeback season with the Red Sox. He ended the season with a 4.50 ERA, but even entering his final start, his ERA was sitting at a solid 3.99 ERA. Paxton gave up 23 earned runs in just four of his starts over the course of 11.1 innings. Outside of the four blowup starts, he had a 2.65 ERA, albeit across a small sample size of just 84.2 innings. If he can just avoid those types of starts in 2024, he will be a valuable piece for the Dodgers.
Teoscar Hernández
Hernández has a clear weakness in his game, which is his over-aggression at the plate. His walk rate, strikeout rate, whiff rate, and chase rate on Statcast were all 13th percentile or worse in 2023. While Hernández does tend to swing and miss a lot, his power numbers are still off the charts. His xSLG, average exit velocity, barrel % and hard-hit % were all 79th percentile or better in 2023. Hernández has a career OPS of .802 in his eight MLB seasons, but in 2023, his OPS dropped to .740 even though he still hit 25 home runs for the third consecutive season.
So what will lead him to a bounce-back season in 2024? Last year, with Hernández playing for the Mariners, he lost the lineup protection he had in Toronto when he had players like George Springer, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Marcus Semien in the lineup with him. While the Mariners certainly still have offensive talent, neither the Blue Jays nor the Mariners had lineups anywhere near the level of the Dodgers' group in 2024. Hernández will get more quality pitches to hit in 2024, and he will capitalize on those opportunities to get back to his Toronto form, where he posted top-20 AL MVP finishes in 2020 and 2021 with back-to-back Silver Slugger Awards.
Joe Kelly
Everyone's fan favorite is back in Los Angeles for another season, and Kelly will be more than ready to perform in 2024. Kelly posted a 2.86 ERA in 2021 with the Dodgers before leaving in free agency to join the Chicago White Sox. In 2022 with Chicago, he posted a 6.08 ERA, and followed that up with a 4.97 ERA before the trade deadline in 2023. However, after Kelly was traded to the Dodgers in 2023, his season turned around immediately.
Kelly posted a 1.74 ERA in just 10.1 regular season innings for the Dodgers, and then posted 1.2 shutout innings in the postseason. Kelly also struck out 35.7% of the batters he faced in 2023, which was the highest strikeout rate of his career.
If Kelly can stay healthy with the Dodgers throughout 2024, his second half of 2023 clearly demonstrated that he can still be a big part of a great bullpen. If the Dodgers are going to claim their eighth title in 2024, they will need Kelly to be a solid piece at the backend of the bullpen, and he will deliver.